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LITERARY CULTURES AND CHILDHOODS

Literary Cultures
and
Eighteenth-
Century
Childhoods
Edited by Andrew O’Malley
Literary Cultures and Childhoods

Series Editor
Lynne Vallone
Department of Childhood Studies
Rutgers University
Camden, NJ, USA
Scholarly interest in the literary figure of the child has grown exponentially
over the last thirty years or so due, in part, to the increased attention given
to children’s literature within the academy and the development of the
multidisciplinary field of Childhood Studies.
Given the crucial importance of children to biological, social, cultural
and national reproduction, it is not surprising that child and adolescent
characters may be found everywhere in Anglo-American literary expres-
sions. Across time and in every literary genre written for adults as well as
in the vast and complex array of children’s literature, ‘the child’ has func-
tioned as a polysemous and potent figure. From Harry Potter to Huck
Finn, some of the most beloved, intriguing and enduring characters in
literature are children.
The aim of this finite five-book series of edited volumes is to chart rep-
resentations of the figure of the child in Anglo-American literary cultures
throughout the ages, mapping how they have changed over time in differ-
ent contexts and historical moments. Volumes move chronologically from
medieval/early modern to contemporary, with each volume addressing a
particular period (eg ‘The Early Modern Child’, ‘The Nineteenth Century
Child’ etc). Through the aggregate of the essays, the series will advance
new understandings of the constructions of the child and the child within
different systems (familial, cultural, national), as communicated through
literature. Volumes will also serve, collectively, as an examination of the
way in which the figure of the child has evolved over the years and how
this has been reflected/anticipated by literature of the time.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15353
 Andrew O’Malley
Editor

Literary Cultures and

Eighteenth-Century
Childhoods
Editor
Andrew O’Malley
Ryerson University
Toronto, ON, Canada

Literary Cultures and Childhoods

ISBN 978-3-319-94736-5    ISBN 978-3-319-94737-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94737-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956866

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Peter Stone / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the series editor, Lynne Vallone, for approaching me
to be the editor of this volume; she has afforded me a wonderful opportu-
nity to work with many scholars whose research I already admired and to
get to know others whose scholarship has been an exciting revelation to
me. In the editing of this volume, I have benefitted greatly from the assis-
tance of two research assistants from the Literatures of Modernity gradu-
ate program at Ryerson University: Erin Della Mattia and Danielle Waite.
Thank you both for your careful and attentive work on these chapters. I
would also like to acknowledge the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University
for its support in the completion of this volume. Finally, I want to express
my gratitude to my wife, Nima Naghibi, and our children, Safianna and
Cyrus; it is as always your love and support that makes everything
possible.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction: Eighteenth-Century Childhoods and

Literary Cultures  1
Andrew O’Malley

Section I Status and Contexts of Childhood  13

2 Age, Status, and Reading in the Eighteenth Century 15

Teresa Michals

3 Circulating Childhood in Eighteenth-­Century England:

The Cultural Work of Periodicals 35
Anja Müller

4 Wards and Apprentices: The Legal and Literary

Construction of the Familial Position of the Child 51
Cheryl Nixon

5 ‘Pray lett none see this impertinent Epistle’: Children’s

Letters and Children in Letters at the Turn of the
Eighteenth Century 75
Adriana Benzaquén

vii
viii CONTENTS

Section II Reading, Pedagogy, and the Child’s Mind  97

6 Learned Pigs and Literate Children: Becoming Human in

Eighteenth-Century Literary Cultures 99
Ann Wierda Rowland

7 Eighteenth-Century Children’s Poetry and the

Complexity of the Child’s Mind117
Louise Joy

8 ‘Powers Expanding Slow’: Children’s ‘Unfolding’ Minds

in Radical Writing of the 1790s139
Susan Manly

9 Mediocrity: Mechanical Training and Music for Girls163

Donelle Ruwe

10 From Wild Fictions to Accurate Observation:

Domesticating Wonder in Children’s Literature of the
Late Eighteenth Century189
Richard De Ritter

11 ‘To Communicate Energy’: Eliza Fenwick Cultures the

New-World Child211
Lissa Paul

Section III Shifting Representations and Meanings of

Childhood 227

12 In the Margins: Children and Graphic Satire in the

Eighteenth Century and Early Nineteenth Century229
Sebastian Mitchell
 CONTENTS ix

13 Redefining the Gothic Child: An Educational

Experiment?261
Jessica R. Evans

14 Lemuel Haynes and ‘Little Adults’: Race and the

Prehistory of Childhood in Early New England281
Jennifer Thorn

Index 301
 Notes on Contributors

Adriana Benzaquén is an Associate Professor in the Department of

History at Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax, Canada). She is the
author of Encounters with Wild Children: Temptation and Disappointment
in the Study of Human Nature (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006)
and of articles on children and youth, health and medicine, human sci-
ence, and friendship in early modern and Enlightenment Europe.
Her current research project is a study of children and child-adult
relations in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies, focusing on the children in John Locke’s circle of friends and
acquaintances.
Richard De Ritter is a Lecturer in the School of English at the University
of Leeds. He has published on a range of eighteenth-century and Romantic
writing, including articles on James Boswell, Maria Edgeworth, and
Elizabeth Hamilton. His book, Imagining Women Readers, 1789–1820:
Well-Regulated Minds, was published by Manchester University Press
in 2014. He is currently working on a new book project entitled
Domesticating Wonder: Women Writing for Children, 1778–1832.
Jessica R. Evans received her Ph.D. in English Literature at the University
of Kentucky. Currently, she is an Instructor of English in Humanities and
Social Sciences and Sigma Kappa Delta Faculty Sponsor at Columbia State
Community College. She teaches, lectures, and writes on a variety of
topics, such as eighteenth-century British literature, development of the
Gothic mode, and children’s literature.

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Louise Joy is a Fellow and Senior Lecturer in English at Homerton

College, University of Cambridge. She is the co-editor of two volumes of
essays, Poetry and Childhood (2010) and The Aesthetics of Children’s
Poetry: A Study of Children’s Verse in English (2017). Her first mono-
graph, Literature’s Children: The Critical Child and the Art of Idealisation,
will be published later this year by Bloomsbury Academic. She has
published widely on topics relating to eighteenth-century literature,
to children’s literature, and to the history of the emotions. Her arti-
cles have appeared in journals including Studies in Romanticism,
Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, History of European Ideas,
Philosophy and Literature, and European Romantic Review.
Susan Manly is a Reader in English at the University of St Andrews and
the author of Language, Custom and Nation in the 1790s: Locke, Tooke,
Wordsworth, Edgeworth (2007). She is currently writing a book on late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century radical and reformist writing for
children, Schools for Treason, and a political and intellectual biography of
Maria Edgeworth. She is also the editor of Maria Edgeworth’s
Harrington and Practical Education and the co-editor of Helen and
Leonora, all in the 12-volume The Novels and Selected Works of Maria
Edgeworth (1999–2003), and the editor of Maria Edgeworth: Selected
Tales for Children and Young People (Palgrave, 2013).
Teresa Michals is an Associate Professor at George Mason University.
Her publications include Books for Children, Books for Adults: Age and the
Novel from Defoe to James (Cambridge, 2014) and “‘Experiments Before
Breakfast’: Toys, Education, and Middle-Class Childhood” in Dennis
Denisoff (Ed.) The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture
(Ashgate, 2008). She studies the history of children’s literature, repre-
sentations of disability, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-­century British
novels. Her work has appeared in journals such as Eighteenth-­Century
Studies, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Disability Studies
Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and NOVEL: A Forum on
Fiction.
Sebastian Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the
University of Birmingham, UK. He has written widely on literature and
art in the eighteenth century. His book Visions of Britain, 1730–1830:
Anglo-Scottish Writing and Representation (2013) was shortlisted for the
Saltire Society Research Book of the Year. He has recently guest edited a
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii

special issue on Ossian for the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. His
study Utopia and Its Discontents will be published by Bloomsbury Press in
2019.
Anja Müller is a Full Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies
at the University of Siegen, where she is a co-chair of the faculty’s research
group on European Children’s Literature (EKJL). Her research interests
range from eighteenth-century literature and culture to contemporary
drama, fantasy, intertextuality and adaptation, (historical) childhood stud-
ies, and children’s literature. Her publications in the latter fields include
Fashioning Childhood in the Eighteenth Century: Age and Identity (ed.,
Ashgate, 2006), Framing Childhood in Eighteenth-Century English
Periodicals and Prints, 1689–1789 (Ashgate, 2009, ChLA Honor Book),
Childhood in the English Renaissance (ed., Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier,
2013), Adapting Canonical Texts in Children’s Literature (ed., Bloomsbury
2013), and Canon Constitution and Canon Change in Children’s
Literature (ed., with Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Routledge, 2016).
Together with Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Astrid Surmatz, she is
co-editing the book series Studies in European Children’s Literature
(Heidelberg: Winter).
Cheryl Nixon is a Professor of English and an Associate Provost at the
University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on literary rep-
resentations and legal restructurings of the family; her current project con-
nects the development of family law to the eighteenth-century rise of the
domestic novel. Her recent books include The Orphan in Eighteenth-­
Century Law and Literature: Estate, Blood, and Body and Novel Definitions:
An Anthology of Commentary on the Novel, 1688–1815. These works and
her articles feature archival research that interweaves print and man-
uscript literary and legal materials. In an attempt to make archival
research and the early novel accessible to a broader public, she has
worked with students to create rare books exhibitions for the Boston
Public Library, including “Crooks, Rogues, and Maids Less than
Virtuous: Books in the Streets of 18th-Century London” and “The
Imaginative Worlds of Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and
the Early Novel.”
Andrew O’Malley is Associate Professor of English at Ryerson University
in Toronto. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Child: Children’s
Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century (Routledge, 2003)
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

and of Children’s Literature, Popular Culture, and Robinson Crusoe

(Palgrave, 2012).
Lissa Paul is a Professor at Brock University in St. Catharines Ontario,
Canada, an Associate General Editor of The Norton Anthology of Children’s
Literature (2005), and a co-editor of Keywords for Children’s Literature
(2011). The Children’s Book Business: Lessons from the Long Eighteenth
Century, her first book on Eliza Fenwick, was published in 2011. Her
new biography, Eliza Fenwick (1766–1840): A Life Rewritten, will be
published by the University of Delaware Press in January 2019, in
their Early Modern Feminisms Series. Lissa’s research is generously
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
of Canada.
Ann Wierda Rowland is an Associate Professor of English at the
University of Kansas. She is the author of Romanticism and Childhood:
The Infantilization of British Literary Culture (Cambridge University
Press, 2012) and the co-editor, with Paul Westover, of Transatlantic
Literature and Author Love in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave, 2016).
She has also published articles on John Keats, William Wordsworth, Walter
Scott, the Romantic ballad revival, the Romantic novel, and sentimental
fiction.
Donelle Ruwe is the author of British Children’s Poetry in the Romantic
Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and the editor
of a collection of essays, Culturing the Child 1660–1830: Essays in Memory
of Mitzi Myers (Scarecrow, 2005), and the forthcoming Children,
Childhood, and Musical Theater. She has published numerous scholarly
articles on Romantic poetics, women writers, and children’s writing
in Eighteenth-Century Life, Writing Women, Children’s Literature,
Nineteenth-Century Contexts, and others. Ruwe is the co-president of
the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Women Writers
Association and has been the chair of the Scholarly Edited Collection
award for the Children’s Literature Association. She has received
research awards including a National Humanities Center Summer
Program Fellowship, the RMMLA Faculty Travel Award, the Fleur
Cowles Fellowship at the Harry Ransom Research Center, and an
Ahmanson Fellowship from UCLA. Ruwe is a published poet, and her
chapbook Condiments won the Kinloch Rivers Award in 1999, and her
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

chapbook Another Message You Miss the Point Of won the Camber Press
Prize in 2006.
Jennifer Thorn is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the
Interdisciplinary Minor in Gender Studies at Saint Anselm College
(New Hampshire). She works in the transatlantic eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, with a special focus on the history of childhood,
class, and race, and is the author of many book chapters and articles
on early American and eighteenth-century British texts. The editor of
the collection Writing British Infanticide: Child-Murder, Gender, and
Print, 1722–1859 (2003), she is at work on a book, Black Children,
Slavery, and Piety in Early New England, which focuses in part on Phillis
Wheatley, about whose life and writings she has published four articles.
 List of Figures

Fig. 9.1 ‘Triple Time’ from Charles Dibdin’s Music Epitomized, 8th
edition. (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Osborne
Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto, Canada) 169
Fig. 9.2 ‘The length of notes as they grow out of each other’ from
Charles Dibdin’s Music Epitomized, 8th edition. (Courtesy of
Toronto Public Library, Osborne Collection of Early
Children’s Books, Toronto, Canada) 170
Fig. 9.3 Plate from Logier’s First Companion to the Royal Patent
Chiroplast, printed with permission of the Harry Ransom
Center, University of Texas Austin 172
Fig. 12.1 Charles Howard Hodges after Richard Morton Paye,
Children Spouting Tragedy, 1785, mezzotint,
45.4 × 55.5 cm. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library,
Yale University) 232
Fig. 12.2 John Dean after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Cupid in the Character
of a Link Boy, 1777, mezzotint, 38.9 × 27.4 cm. (Yale Center
for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund) 235
Fig. 12.3 John Dean after Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mercury, 1777,
mezzotint, 39 × 27.4 cm. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul
Mellon Fund) 236
Fig. 12.4 Thomas Rowlandson, Political Affection, 1784, etching,
24.5 × 35 cm. (General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University) 239
Fig. 12.5 James Gillray, Lady Termagant Flaybum Going to Give her
Step Son a Taste of her Desert after Dinner […], 1786,
hand-coloured etching and stipple engraving, 43 × 54 cm.
(Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University) 240

xvii
xviii List of Figures

Fig. 12.6 James Gillray, John Bull’s Progress, 1793, hand-coloured

etching, 31 × 38 cm. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole
Library, Yale University) 242
Fig. 12.7 James Gillray, A Block for the Wigs; or, the New State
Whirligig, 1783, etching, 25 × 34 cm. (Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection) 243
Fig. 12.8 Thomas Rowlandson, The Devils Darling, 1814, hand-­
coloured etching, 34 × 24 cm. (Image courtesy of Bonhams) 245
Fig. 12.9 William Hogarth, Gin Lane, 1751, engraving and etching,
38.9 × 32.1 cm. (Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library,
Yale University) 249
Fig. 12.10 William Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress, Plate 6, 1732, etching
and engraving, 31.6 × 39 cm. (Courtesy of the Lewis
Walpole Library, Yale University) 250
Fig. 12.11 William Hogarth, First Stage of Cruelty, The Four Stages of
Cruelty, 1751, etching and engraving, 38.7 × 32.4 cm. (Yale
Center for British Art, Gift of Patricia Cornwall) 252
Fig. 12.12 Bernard Baron after William Hogarth, Evening, The Four
Times of Day, 1738, etching and engraving, 45.4 × 37.5 cm.
(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection) 254
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Eighteenth-Century
Childhoods and Literary Cultures

Andrew O’Malley

The eighteenth century has long been regarded as a watershed period in

the history of both childhood and children’s literature. It saw the rapid
growth of a specialized text industry addressing young readers,1 and at the
same time, the child became increasingly visible and important in a range
of ‘adult’ discourses. Philippe Ariès’s now more than a half-century-old
assertion that the child, as differentiated subject with its own needs and
material culture, did not exist in Europe before the seventeenth century
has rightly and usefully been critiqued,2 as has J. H. Plumb’s famous cel-
ebration of a ‘new world of children’ in the eighteenth century.3 Yet the
fact remains that, certainly and most notably within the more privileged
segments of English society, experiences of childhood for many changed
significantly in the period this volume considers, as did the ways in—and
extent to—which the child circulated within literary culture.
There has been considerable scholarship, including new research
to appear in the other volumes of the Literary Cultures and Childhoods
series, demonstrating that the generations before the period considered
here produced or adapted texts for the use of child readers. Likewise, ‘the
child’ had already accrued a variety of cultural meanings in the literary

A. O’Malley (*)
Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: aomalley@ryerson.ca

© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. O’Malley (ed.), Literary Cultures and Eighteenth-Century
Childhoods, Literary Cultures and Childhoods,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94737-2_1
2 A. O’MALLEY

imagination. One significant change in the long eighteenth century, how-

ever, is the ubiquity of childhood both in terms of the print materials
marketed to people at this stage of life and in terms of the discourses in
which it becomes an important consideration and significant trope. Both
cases owe a great deal, of course, to changing demographics in Britain
during the period, which saw considerable growth in the number of young
people, and to economic growth that helped increase literacy rates and
spurred a rapidly expanding text industry that quickly identified the
opportunities afforded by the greater numbers of parents with disposable
income.4 Added in this period to the existing juvenile corpus of ­hornbooks,
battledores, chapbooks, devotional texts, fables, and conduct books was a
remarkable range of reading material designed and marketed specifically
for children: long-form fiction modelled on the novel for adult readers;
periodicals; dramas for home theatricals; books of verse (particularly by
the end of the century); and non-fiction works covering such subjects as
the natural sciences, technological innovations, local and world geography
and history, mathematics, and biography.
As children increasingly became subjects for whom adults wrote, they
similarly became subjects about whom adults wrote with greater fre-
quency. Pedagogical treatises and systems proliferated in the period,
penned by some of the key luminaries of the age, most famously John
Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.5 Medical experts devoted greater
attention to repairing and sustaining the health of young people, produc-
ing treatises for fellow practitioners, along with advice books for parents
anxious to safeguard the immediate and future well-being of their off-
spring.6 The legal status of the child likewise became a matter of greater
concern, and this interest manifested itself in novels and plays centring on
issues of inheritance and apprenticeship, as Cheryl Nixon’s chapter in this
volume discusses. As Susan Manly and Sebastian Mitchell demonstrate in
their chapters, childhood also became a powerful trope that could be
mobilized for different political agendas, while Ann Wierda Rowland, also
a contributor to this volume, has shown elsewhere the extent to which
theorizing about the child extended into theories of poetics and
language.7
When we speak of changes in the realm of childhood, in the eighteenth
century or in any other period, it is worth keeping in mind, as Adrienne
Gavin notes, that these are never adopted uniformly or universally; it is a
mistake to assume ‘each new – or seemingly new – construction of child-
hood neatly and irrevocably replaces its predecessor.’8 Likewise, such
 INTRODUCTION: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHILDHOODS AND LITERARY… 3

changes are rarely as unequivocally positive as is sometimes suggested by

the accounts of children’s ‘progress’ common to later twentieth-century
histories on the subject.9 Taking into account a variety of literary and print
forms—novels, poetry, legal writing, periodicals, pamphlets, personal let-
ters, graphic prints, along with the literature produced specifically for
young readers—the authors of this volume explore the complex and some-
times paradoxical ways in which childhood was approached and repre-
sented in the period. To account for this complexity, this volume looks at
eighteenth-century childhoods from a variety of angles: as a set of expecta-
tions, desires, concerns, limitations, and capacities adults sought to address
in their writing for young people; as a trope or symbol that performed a
range of cultural work in the writings adults produced for adult readers; as
a lived, embodied experience children recorded and actively shaped. Then
as now, the meanings of childhood were not always stable, and the bound-
aries—such as age—used to demarcate it were at times fluid, as Teresa
Michals’s chapter here demonstrates. Childhood tended, as it still tends,
to be invoked with purpose and its definition relies on the contexts in
which it is being addressed. One of the fundamental contradictions of
childhood within our culture illustrates this instability, and it is a contra-
diction that begins to take shape in the eighteenth century: that the child
embodies, sometimes simultaneously, the promise of futurity as well as an
ideal of, and longing for, a lost past. Childhood became a category equally
suited to Enlightenment ideas of progress and improvement and to the
sentimental and nostalgic ideas associated with what has come to be
known as the ‘Romantic child.’
The study of historical children’s literature and childhood has not
always co-habited easily with the modern field of ‘child studies.’ Peter
Hunt famously and controversially insisted that current children’s litera-
ture scholarship should keep to works produced for children who are
‘recognizably’ like today’s children.10 At the same time, as Matthew
Grenby recounts, bibliographers such as Brian Alderson, with deep invest-
ments in the historical particulars of children’s book publishing, have
expressed frustration over recent trends in children’s literature criticism,
‘especially any criticism based on literary theory.’11 This volume attempts
to attend to the demands of rigorous historical analysis while remaining
wholly aware of the theoretical concerns child studies as a discipline has
raised over the problems of child-adult relations and of the constructed-
ness of ‘childhood’ as a category. The essays here also acknowledge and
build on recent methodological developments specific to the field of
4 A. O’MALLEY

e­ ighteenth-century children’s literature and culture, such as: the ideo-

logical readings of children’s texts pioneered by Isaac Kramnick and Alan
Richardson; the feminist recuperations and reassessments Mitzi Myers
helped initiate; and more recently reader-focused investigations of the
sort pursued by Matthew Grenby.12
The thirteen chapters contained in this collection are arranged into
three sections that correspond to some of the key aspects of child studies
this introduction has tried to identify: definitions and experiences of child-
hood; children’s reading and pedagogy; and representations of childhood
in adult discourse. Several offer fresh insights into texts and authors with
considerable existing criticism: Jessica Evans’s look at pedagogy in Ann
Radcliffe, or Richard De Ritter’s treatment of wonder in Arnaud Berquin,
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and others. They also bring to light now-obscure
aspects of the period’s print culture, as in the case of Donelle Ruwe’s
investigation into debates around the use of the ‘chiroplast’ in musical
training. Some, such as Anja Müller’s recasting of child-adult power
dynamics, bring new theoretical approaches to the field, while others, spe-
cifically Adriana Benzaquén’s study of children’s letter-writing, inform us
about how young people in the period understood themselves within the
system of family relations. Although the focus of this volume is very much
on texts and discourses for and about childhood in the British context
(more so than I had originally hoped would be the case), two of the essays
here reach beyond England, to look at questions of race and childhood in
the American context (Jennifer Thorn), and at British ex-patriot Eliza
Fenwick’s efforts to forge a transatlantic pedagogy (Lissa Paul).
For a volume that concerns itself with English-language literary cul-
tures, such a concentration on Britain is to be expected. There is, however,
a growing body of scholarship on American childhoods and children’s
literature in the eighteenth century.13 As well, childhoods in the Irish and
Scottish, as well as the English provincial and labouring-class, contexts are
certainly deserving of greater consideration; this proved regrettably not
possible in this volume. Finally, while Jennifer Thorn’s essay makes an
important contribution to scholarship on African-American childhood,
much more remains to be investigated in this area, as well as in colonial
and Indigenous childhoods.
Section I, ‘Status and Contexts of Childhood,’ gathers essays that situ-
ate childhood socially in the eighteenth century and explore its defini-
tional contours. In ‘Age, Status, and Reading in the Eighteenth Century,’
Teresa Michals offers a careful reading of the period’s most influential text
 INTRODUCTION: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHILDHOODS AND LITERARY… 5

about children, Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which seeks

to untangle ideas of age, dependence, social status, and the idea of ‘age-­
appropriate’ reading. As she reveals, the age-levelled reading we now
assume to have a natural and obvious correspondence to children’s needs
and capacities was also profoundly rooted in structures of social hierarchy.
Anja Müller looks at one of the early eighteenth century’s most generative
textual sites for discourses of childhood: widely read periodicals such as
The Tatler and The Spectator. Her essay, ‘Circulating Childhood in
Eighteenth-Century England,’ proposes a theoretical framework new to
historical child studies, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, to re-­
evaluate the adult-child relationship. Instead of viewing childhood as
merely the subject on which adult power is exercised, Müller proposes a
more fluid dynamic in which its meanings are governed by networks of
association between a variety of different actors.
In ‘Wards and Apprentices,’ Cheryl Nixon investigates the surprising
complexity of the period’s family structures and the child’s legal status,
especially within non-nuclear arrangements. Eighteenth-century England
recognized a broad range of biological, marriage, and work alignments in
its family structures, and the period’s literary texts were often preoccupied
with wards and apprentices and how these dependent household members
tested the limitations of the legally defined child. Adriana Benzaquén pro-
vides an intimate look into the family dynamics revealed in personal letters
(John Locke’s friend and the dedicatee of Some Thoughts Concerning
Education) Edward Clarke, his wife, and children wrote one another over
many years. ‘Pray lett none see this impertinent Epistle’ offers unique
insight into how children understood themselves within the network of
family relations and how they moved between formal and familiar registers
depending on the content and addressees of their correspondences.
The essays in Section II, ‘Reading, Pedagogy, and the Child’s Mind,’
focus primarily on writers for and educators of young people, what they
saw as the stakes involved in literary production for child readers, and how
they understood children as learners. Ann Wierda Rowland, in ‘Learned
Pigs and Literate Children,’ considers the phenomenon of the famous
‘learned pig’ who exhibited mathematical and spelling prowess in the
1780s and became emblematic in the period’s elite literature of growing
anxiety over popular print culture and the state of traditional social order.
The pig, who makes an appearance in one of the period’s most renowned
children’s books, Sarah Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories, raises issues about
literacy as a marker of difference not just between human and animal, but
6 A. O’MALLEY

between adult and child as well. In ‘Eighteenth-Century Children’s

Poetry,’ Louise Joy examines what poetry written for young readers in the
period reveals about their mental capacities and how they acquire knowl-
edge. The value of poetry as a pedagogical tool was widely debated in the
period, as were concerns over the debasement of an elevated aesthetic
form that producing a lower, child’s version entailed. Isaac Watts’s Divine
Songs, however, remained in print throughout the century and demon-
strated both the utility of poetry to overall learning and the complex cog-
nitive processes the young mind could perform.
The nature of the child’s mind, how it acquired information and knowl-
edge, was a subject of considerable interest in the period. While Locke’s
tabula rasa was decidedly the most influential psychological model across
the eighteenth century, Susan Manly discusses a radical alternative in
‘Powers Expanding Slowly.’ Progressive writers, such as Mary Wollstonecraft
and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, posited—instead of a blank slate to be judi-
ciously filled by an adult authority—an ‘innate’ rationality, which when
‘unfolded’ and liberated could offer socially transformative possibilities. If
the mind was the primary site of pedagogical efforts, Donelle Ruwe reminds
us in her essay, ‘Mediocrity: Mechanical Training and Music for Girls,’ of
the importance of the physical training involved in the acquisition of the
polite accomplishment of music. In so doing, Ruwe revisits the period’s
concerns over rote and experiential learning, while elucidating how music
training for girls conflicted with gender and class expectations around per-
formance and labour.
The children’s literature of the late eighteenth century has been branded
‘rational-moralist’ and regarded as overly didactic; it was reviled by contem-
poraries Charles Lamb and Wordsworth, and by generations of (mostly
male) scholars of children’s book history as the enemy of childhood imagina-
tion and wonder.14 Yet as Richard De Ritter argues in ‘From Wild Fictions to
Accurate Observations,’ wonder remained an integral part of the period’s
books for the young. Indeed, it is a mistake to consider ‘wondrous’ and
‘rational’ as binary terms; the rationalist writers of the day did not jettison the
one in favour of the other, but instead ‘domesticated’ the former by locating
the wondrous in the commonplace and familiar. Lissa Paul’s essay, ‘To
Communicate Energy,’ which rounds out this section, traces the journey of
Eliza Fenwick, an important early nineteenth-century children’s writer and
educator who brought her experience and pedagogical ideas developed in
England to the Caribbean and North America, where she established a series
of schools. Fenwick’s often trying experiences supporting a family as an
 INTRODUCTION: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHILDHOODS AND LITERARY… 7

e­ ducator highlight not only the resilience of a woman inspired by and con-
tributing to progressive pedagogical theories, but how the transatlantic
migration of these theories—and practices—necessitated adaption to their
new context.
The essays in the final section of the volume address the period’s ‘Shifting
Representations and Meanings of Childhood’ in genres and discourses pri-
marily directed at adults. Looking at satirical prints in his essay, ‘In the
Margins,’ Sebastian Mitchell considers the different cultural and aesthetic
functions the figure of the child served in popular visual culture. Mitchell
notes that while the child is a more prominent figure in sentimental prints
than in satirical prints, suggesting the increasing affective investment in
childhood, slippage in childhood’s meaning does however occur between
the implied associations of child, innocence, and sentiment, and of adult,
experience, and satire. In ‘Redefining the Gothic Child,’ Jessica Evans takes
up the figure of the child in the popular Gothic fiction of Ann Radcliffe.
The Gothic, with its wild improbabilities and excesses of sentiment and
sensibility, has conventionally been regarded as the antithesis of rational
pedagogy. Radcliffe’s portrayals of young women developing rational
judgement and critical thinking, however, align surprisingly well with the
work of such advocates for rational female education as Mary Wollstonecraft
and Maria Edgeworth. Finally, Jennifer Thorn’s chapter invites, like the
others in this section and others throughout this volume, a reconsideration
of one of the givens of historical child studies: that the children’s literature
and child-rearing practices of the Puritan/Congregationalist faiths were
conspicuous for their oppressiveness. In ‘Lemuel Haynes and “Little
Adults,”’ Thorn investigates what she calls the ‘levelling tendency of origi-
nal sin’ and how this religious community’s focus on piety instead of reason
enabled some subversion of adult authority over children. The same doc-
trine also allowed for the possibility, albeit always in a contained way, of
African-American spiritual superiority, as the case of the Black minister
Lemuel Haynes demonstrates. Thorn’s analysis allows for a reconsideration
of how structures of authority operate in the contexts of race and of age.
While this volume cannot aspire to a comprehensive view of the excit-
ing research being done on the child and children’s literature in the eigh-
teenth century, it does hope at least to convey some of the diversity of the
work being undertaken in the field. In an effort to showcase the interdis-
ciplinarity of the field, the essays here come from scholars working in a
range of disciplines, including literary and cultural studies, history, educa-
tion, and visual culture. The motivation to collect work from different
8 A. O’MALLEY

disciplines comes in part from a desire to see the study of childhood more
fully integrated into other areas of scholarly concern. As Andrea Immel
and Michael Witmore have noted, ‘it is just as important to connect those
issues of particular relevance to a child’s situation to those circulating in
the wider culture. Children’s studies cannot be an island, although it may
have sometimes seemed so during the years following the publication of
Centuries of Childhood.’15 Immel and Witmore are right to call the
exchange between ‘childhood and the broader social categories that have
shaped the more “elevated realms of European culture”’ a ‘two-way traf-
fic,’16 just as Kimberley Reynolds is right to assert that children’s litera-
ture’s ‘long history and the fact that writing for children straddles the
domestic and institutional, official and unofficial, high and mass cultures’
make it ‘a particularly valuable source of historical information’ about a
wide range of subjects.17 Yet the siloing of child studies, and what Brian
Sutton-Smith famously identified almost fifty years ago as ‘the triviality
barrier’ erected around the study of subjects related to childhood, still
continues for reasons both institutional and cultural.18 Tremendous strides
have been made to correct this attitude, and this volume hopes humbly to
contribute to that important, ongoing work.

Notes
1. Debates over whether or not the ‘origins’ of children’s literature can be
found in eighteenth-century England have been, at least to my mind,
resolved satisfactorily enough that a short note should suffice here. It is
certainly very likely that children have been reading something for as long
as there have been reading materials—if perhaps not ‘ever since there were
children,’ as Seth Lerer has claimed (Children’s Literature: A Reader’s
History [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008], 1). However, as
Matthew Grenby has argued, it is not until the eighteenth century that a
self-consciously aware genre for child readers gained widespread recogni-
tion: ‘a set of texts specifically commissioned, written and marketed for the
use of the young’ (The Child Reader, 1700–1840, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 4.
2. See Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (Trans.
Robert Baldick, New York: Vintage Books, 1962). Medieval scholars in
particular have taken issue with, and gone to considerable lengths to dis-
prove, Ariès’s claim that ‘in medieval society the idea of childhood did not
exist’ (125). See, for example, Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (New
 INTRODUCTION: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHILDHOODS AND LITERARY… 9

Haven: Yale UP, 2003) and Sally Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon

England (Stroud, UK: Allan Sutton, 1999).
3. See Plumb, ‘The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England’
(Past and Present 67.1 (1975): 64–95). Ludmilla Jordanova, in ‘New
Worlds for Children in the Eighteenth Century: Problems of Historical
Interpretation’ (History of the Human Sciences 3.1 (1990): 69–83), takes
Plumb to task for an overly rosy view of the period’s childhood that elides
the experiences of the majority of children for whom the rich new material
culture Plumb describes was not accessible.
4. The demographic, economic, and print culture expansions I mention here
have been thoroughly documented by many historians; Morag Styles and
Evelyn Arizpe offer a particularly useful short summary related specifically
to juvenile reading and publishing in Reading Lessons from the Eighteenth
Century: Mothers, Children and Texts (Shenstone: Pied Piper Publishing
Ltd., 2006); see esp. Chap. 2, ‘The Changing World of Books and Reading
in the Eighteenth Century.’
5. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and Emile (1762) are of
course the most famous and influential examples. There were many more
that followed, however; these include Mary Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts on
the Education of Daughters (1787), Catharine Macaulay’s Letters on
Education: With Observations on Religious and Metaphysical Subjects
(1790), Joseph Priestley’s Miscellaneous Observations Relating to Education
(1778), and Erasmus Darwin’s A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education
in Boarding Schools (1797).
6. A few examples by notable physicians of the period include: William
Buchan’s Advice to Mothers on the Subject of Their Own Health, Strength,
and Beauty of Their Offspring (1803); William Cadogan’s An Essay upon
Nursing, and the Management of Children, from Their Birth to Three Years
of Age (1748); and Thomas Beddoes’s A Guide for Self-Preservation, and
Parental Affection (1793).
7. See Rowland’s Romanticism and Childhood: The Infantilization of British
Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), a study
she describes as a ‘rhetorical history of childhood’ in which she charts how
‘new ideas of childhood made possible new ways of thinking about lan-
guage, literature, history and culture’ (11).
8. Adrienne E. Gavin, ‘The Child in British Literature: An Introduction,’ The
Child in British Literature: Literary Constructions of Childhood, Medieval to
Contemporary (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2012), 3.
9. Plumb’s account subscribes largely to a historical model of steady
improvement, while Lloyd deMause, in The History of Childhood (New
York: Psychohistory Press, 1974), posits a ‘psychohistorical’ trajectory of
increasing parental empathy resulting in incremental improvements to
10 A. O’MALLEY

the lives of children. David Rudd has observed that histories of children’s
books also tended to follow this ‘humanist’ and ‘presentist’ ethos until
the intervention of poststructuralism in children’s literature scholarship;
see ‘The Development of Children’s Literature’ in The Routledge
Companion to Children’s Literature (ed. David Rudd, Abingdon:
Routledge, 2010): 3–13.
10. Peter Hunt, Criticism, Theory, and Children’s Literature (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991, 61). For a useful discussion of Hunt’s assertion, see
M. O. Grenby, Children’s Literature (2nd Edition, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2014), 2–3.
11. Matthey Grenby, ‘Bibliography,’ International Companion Encyclopedia of
Children’s Literature (2nd edition, vol. 1, Peter Hunt, ed., Abingdon:
Routledge, 2004), 203.
12. See Isaac Kramnick’s ‘Children’s Literature and Bourgeois Ideology:
Observations on Culture and Industrial Capitalism in the Later Eighteenth
Century’ (Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 12 [1983]: 11–44) and
Alan Richardson’s Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as
Social Practice, 1780–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994); one of the most influential of Mitzi Myers’s many contributions is
‘Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary
Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children’s Books’
(Children’s Literature 14 [1986]: 31–56); using a variety of documents,
including children’s marginalia in their books, Grenby explores the child’s
experience of reading in The Child Reader.
13. See, for example, Anna Mae Duane’s Suffering Childhood in Early America:
Violence, Race, and the Making of the Child Victim (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 2010) and Courtney Weikle-Mills’s Imaginary Citizens:
Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640–1868
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
14. Lamb famously referred to Barbauld and her peers as ‘those blights and
blasts of all that is human in man and child’ (The Life, Letters, and Writings
of Charles Lamb, 6 vols., ed. Percy Fitzgerald [1876; reprint, Freeport, N.Y.:
Books for Libraries, 1971], I: 421). Wordsworth offers a lengthy lament
for the child trained in rational pedagogy in Book V of The Prelude.
15. Andrea Immel and Michael Witmore, ‘Little Differences: Children, Their
Books, and Culture in the Study of Early Modern Europe,’ Childhood and
Children’s Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550–1800 (New York:
Routledge, 2006), 3.
16. Ibid., 10.
17. Kimberley Reynolds, Children’s Literature: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.
 INTRODUCTION: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CHILDHOODS AND LITERARY… 11

18. Brian Sutton-Smith, ‘The Psychology of Childlore: The Triviality Barrier,’

Western Folklore 29.1 (1970): 1–8. Sutton-Smith remarks on how all things
connected to childhood—play, imagination, irrationality—are relegated to
the realm of the ‘unserious.’
 SECTION I

Status and Contexts of Childhood

 CHAPTER 2

Age, Status, and Reading in the Eighteenth

Century

Teresa Michals

Imagine walking through a bookstore that has no sections labeled ‘Teens,’

‘Kids,’ ‘Fiction,’ ‘Romance,’ or ‘Thrillers,’ a bookstore that is instead
divided up into sections labeled ‘Masters’ and ‘Everybody Else’—and one
very small, very new room labeled ‘Children of the Aspiring Middle Class.’
Finding our way in the eighteenth-century book market is a similarly dis-
orienting experience. In our own time, the difference between books for
children and books for adults seems natural. It shapes the publishing and
marketing choices of presses and the curricula of schools and universities,
as well as the floor plans of libraries and bookstores, and the software
through which we try to control access to the Internet. When we turn
back a few centuries, however, writing, marketing, and readership look
quite different, because age itself worked quite differently. While we may
consider age differences to be fundamental and differences in social status
to be relatively superficial, much writing up through the early eighteenth
century sees social status as the fundamental difference, often imagining
age itself in the likeness of social status. To this way of thinking, children
are like servants and servants are like children. Subordinate status defines
them both. John Locke’s enormously influential manual on how to bring

T. Michals (*)
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
e-mail: tmichals@gmu.edu

© The Author(s) 2018 15

A. O’Malley (ed.), Literary Cultures and Eighteenth-Century
Childhoods, Literary Cultures and Childhoods,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94737-2_2
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And as I thought of Yasma, and gazed at her handiwork, the full
sense of my wretchedness swept over me. Could she really be gone,
mysteriously gone, past any effort of mine to bring her back? Was it
possible that many a long bitter day and cold lonely night would pass
before I could see her again? Or, for that matter, how did I know that
she would ever return?—How attach any hope to her vague
promises? What if she could not keep those promises? What if
calamity should overtake her in her hiding place? She might be ill,
she might be crippled, she might be dead, and I would not even
know it!
While such thoughts blundered through my mind, I tried to keep
occupied by kindling some dry branches and oak logs in the great
open fireplace. But my broodings persisted, and would not be stilled
even after a wavering golden illumination filled the cabin. Outside,
the storm still moaned like a band of driven souls in pain; and the
uncanny fancy came to me that lost spirits were speaking from the
gale; that the spirits of the Ibandru wandered homelessly without,
and that Yasma, even Yasma, might be among them! Old folk
superstitions, tales of men converted into wraiths and of phantoms
that appeared as men, forced themselves upon my imagination; and
I found myself harboring—and, for the moment, almost crediting—
notions as strange as ever disturbed the primitive soul. What if the
Ibandru were not human after all? Or what if, human for half the
year, they roamed the air ghost-like for the other half? Or was it that,
like the Greek Persephone, they must spend six months in the
sunlight and six months in some Plutonian cave?
Preposterous as such questions would formerly have seemed, they
did not impress me as quite absurd as I sat alone on the straw-
covered floor of my log cave, gazing into the flames that smacked
their lean lips rabidly, and listening to the gale that rushed by with a
torrential roaring. Like a child who fears to have strayed into a
goblin's den, I was unnerved and unmercifully the prey of my own
imagination; I could not keep down the thought that there was
something weird about my hosts. Now, as rarely before during my
exile, I was filled with an overpowering longing for home and friends,
for familiar streets, and safe, well-known city haunts; and I could
almost have wept at the impossibility of escape. Except for Yasma—
Yasma, whose gentleness held me more firmly than iron chains—I
would have prayed to leave this dreary wilderness and never return.
Finally, in exhaustion as much of the mind as of the body, I sank
down upon my straw couch, covered myself with my goatskin coat,
and temporarily lost track of the world and its vexations. But even in
sleep I was not to enjoy peace; confused dreams trailed me through
the night; and in one, less blurred than the others, I was again with
Yasma, and felt her kiss upon my cheek, wonderfully sweet and
compassionate, and heard her murmur that I must not be sad or
impatient but must wait for her till the spring. But even as she spoke
a dark form intruded between us, and sealed our lips, and forced her
away until she was no more than a specter in the far distance. And
as in terror I gazed at the dark stranger, I recognized something
familiar about her; and with a cry of alarm, I awoke, for the pose and
features were those of Yulada!
Hours must have passed while I slept; the fire had smoldered low,
and only one red ember, gaping like a raw untended wound, cast its
illumination across the cabin. But through chinks in the walls a faint
gray light was filtering in, and I could no longer hear the wind
clamoring.
An hour or two later I arose, swallowed a handful of dried herbs by
way of breakfast, and forced open the cabin door. It was an altered
world that greeted me; the clouds had rolled away, and the sky,
barely tinged with the last fading pink and buff of dawn, was of a
pale, unruffled blue. But a white sheet covered the ground, and
mantled the roofs of the log huts, and wove fantastic patterns over
the limbs of leafless bushes and trees. All things seemed new-made
and beautiful, yet all were wintry and forlorn—and what a majestic
sight were the encircling peaks! Their craggy shoulders, yesterday
bare and gray and dotted with only an occasional patch of white,
were clothed in immaculate snowy garments, reaching far
heavenward from the upper belts of the pines, whose dark green
seemed powdered with an indistinguishable spray.
But I tried to forget that terrible and hostile splendor; urged by a hope
that gradually flickered and went out, I made a slow round of the
village. At each cabin I paused, peering through the window or
knocking at the unbolted door and entering; and at each cabin I sank
an inch nearer despair. As yet, of course, I had had no proof that I
was altogether abandoned—might there not still be some old man or
woman, some winter-loving hunter or doughty watchman, who had
been left behind until the tribe's return in the spring? But no man,
woman or child stirred in the white spaces between the cabins; no
man, woman or child greeted me in any of the huts.... All was bare
as though untenanted for months; and here an empty earthen pan or
kettle hanging on the wall, there a dozen unshelled nuts forgotten in
a corner, yonder a half-burnt candle or a cracked water jug or
discarded sandal, were the only tokens of recent human occupancy.
It was but natural that I should feel most forlorn upon entering
Yasma's cabin. How mournfully I gazed at the walls her eyes had
beheld a short twenty-four hours before! and at a few scattered trifles
that had been hers! My attention was especially caught by a little
pink wildflower, shaped like a primrose, which hung drooping in a
waterless jar; and the odd fancy came to me that this was like
Yasma herself. Tenderly, urged by a sentiment I hardly understood, I
lifted the blossom from the jar, pressed it against my bosom, and
fastened it securely there.
The outside world now seemed bright and genial enough. From
above the eastern peaks the sun beamed generously upon the
windless valley; and there was warmth in his rays as he put the snow
to flight and sent little limpid streams rippling across the fields. But to
me it scarcely mattered whether the sun shone or the gale dashed
by. Now there was an irony in the sunlight, an irony I resented even
as I should have resented the bluster of the storm. Yet, paradoxically,
it was to sunlit nature that I turned for consolation, for what but the
trees and streams and soaring heights could make me see with
broader vision? Scornful of consequences, I plodded through the
slushy ground to the woods; and roaming the wide solitudes, with the
snow and the soggy brown leaves beneath and the almost denuded
branches above, I came to look upon my problems with my first trace
of courage.
"This too will pass," I told myself, using the words of one older and
wiser than I. And I pictured a time when these woods would be here,
and I would not; pictured even a nearer time when I should roam
them with laughter on my lips. What after all were a few months of
solitude amid this magnificent world?
In such a mood I began to warm my flagging spirits and to plan for
the winter. I should have plenty to occupy me; there were still many
cracks and crannies in my cabin wall, which I must fill with clay; there
was still much wood to haul from the forest; there were heavy
garments to make from the skins supplied by the natives; and there
would be my food to prepare daily from my hoard in the cabin, and
my water to be drawn from the stream that flowed to the rear of
village. Besides, I might be able to go on long tours of exploration; I
might amuse myself by examining the mountain strata, and possibly
even make some notable geological observations; and I might
sometime—the thought intruded itself slyly and insidiously—satisfy
my curiosity by climbing to Yulada.
Emboldened by such thoughts, I roamed the woods for hours, and
returned to my cabin determined to battle unflinchingly and to
emerge triumphant.

It will be needless to dwell upon the days that followed. Although the
moments crawled painfully, each week an epoch and each month an
age, very little occurred that is worthy of record. Yet somehow I did
manage to occupy the time—what other course had I, this side of
suicide or madness? As in remembrance of a nightmare, I recall how
sometimes I would toil all the daylight hours to make my cabin snug
and secure; how at other times I would wander across the valley to
the lake shown me by Karem, catching fish with an improvised line,
even though I had first to break through the ice; how, again, I would
idly follow the half-wild goat herds that browsed in remote corners of
the valley; how I would roam the various trails until I had mapped
them all in my mind, and had discovered the only outlet in the
mountains about Sobul—a long, prodigiously deep, torrent-threaded
ravine to the north, which opened into another deserted valley
capped by desolate and serrated snowpeaks. The discovery of this
valley served only to intensify my sense of captivity, for it brought me
visions of mountain after mountain, range after range, bleak and
unpopulated, which stretched away in frozen endless succession.
But the days when I could rove the mountains were days of
comparative happiness. Too often the trails, blocked by the deep soft
drifts or the ice-packs, were impassable for one so poorly equipped
as I; and too often the blizzards raged. Besides, the daylight hours
were but few, since the sun-excluding mountain masses made the
dawn late and the evening early; and often the tedium seemed
unendurable when I sat in my cabin at night, watching the flames
that danced and crackled in the fireplace, and dreaming of Yasma
and the spring, or of things still further away, and old friends and
home. At times, scarcely able to bear the waiting, I would pace back
and forth like a caged beast, back and forth, from the fire to the
woodpile, and from the woodpile to the fire. At other times, more
patient, I would amuse myself by trying to kindle some straw with bits
of flint, or by returning to the ways of my boyhood and whittling sticks
into all manner of grotesque designs. And occasionally, when the
mood was upon me, I would strain my eyes by the flickering log
blaze, confiding my diary to the notebook I had picked up in our old
camp beyond the mountain. For the purposes of this diary, I had but
one pencil, which gradually dwindled to a stub that I could hardly
hold between two fingers—and with the end of the pencil, late in the
winter, the diary also came to a close.
Although this record was written merely as a means of whiling away
the hours and was not intended for other eyes, I find upon opening it
again that it describes my plight more vividly than would be possible
for me after the passage of years; and I am tempted to quote a
typical memorandum.
As I peer at that curiously cramped and tortured handwriting, my
eyes pause at the following:
"Monday, December 29th. Or it may be Tuesday the 30th,
for I fear I have forgotten to mark one of the daily notches
on the cabin walls, by which I keep track of the dates. All
day I was forced to remain in my cabin, for the season's
worst storm was raging. Only once did I leave shelter, and
that was to get water. But the stream was frozen almost
solid, and it was a task to pound my way through the ice
with one of the crude native axes. Meanwhile the gale
beat me in the face till my cheeks were raw; the snow
came down in a mist of pellets that half blinded me; and a
chill crept through my clothes till my very skin seemed
bared to the ice-blast. I was fifteen minutes in thawing
after I had crept back to the cabin. But even within the
cabin there seemed no way to keep warm, for the wind
rushed in through cracks that I could not quite fill; and the
fire, though I heaped it with fuel, was feeble against the
elemental fury outside.
"But the cold would be easier to bear than the loneliness.
There is little to do, almost nothing to do; and I sit
brooding on the cabin floor, or stand brooding near the
fire; and life seems without aim or benefit. Strange
thoughts keep creeping through my mind—visions of a
limp form dangling on a rope from log rafters; or of a half-
buried form that the snow has numbed to forgetfulness.
But always there are other visions to chide and reproach; I
remember a merry day in the woods, when two brown
eyes laughed at me from beneath auburn curls; and I hear
voices that call as if from the future, and see hands that
take mine gently and restrain them from violence. Perhaps
I am growing weak of mind and will, for my emotions flow
like a child's; I would be ashamed to admit—though I
confess it freely enough to the heedless paper—that more
than once, in the long afternoon and the slow dismal
twilight, the tears rolled down from my eyes.
"As I write these words, it is evening—only seven o'clock,
my watch tells me, though I might believe it to be midnight.
The blazes still flare in the fireplace, and I am stretched
full-length on the floor, trying to see by the meager light.
The storm has almost died down; only by fits and starts it
mutters now, like a beast whose frenzy has spent itself.
But other, more ominous sounds fill the air. From time to
time I hear the barking of a jackal, now near, now far;
while louder and more long-drawn and mournful, there
comes at intervals the fierce deep wailing of a wolf,
answered from the remote woods by other wolves, till all
the world seems to resound with a demoniac chorus. Of
all noises I have ever heard, this is to me the most
terrorizing; and though safe within pine walls, I tremble
where I lie by the fire, even as the cave-man may have
done at that same soul-racking sound. I know, of course,
how absurd this is; yet I have pictures of sly slinking feet
that pad silently through the snow, and keen hairy muzzles
that trail my footsteps even to this door, and long gleaming
jaws that open. Only by forcing myself to write can I keep
my mind from such thoughts; but, even so, I shudder
whenever that dismal call comes howling, howling from
the dark, as if with all the concentrated horror and ferocity
in the universe!"
 Chapter XII
THE MISTRESS OF THE PEAK
During the long months of solitude I let my gaze travel frequently
toward the southern mountains and Yulada. Like the image of
sardonic destiny, she still stood afar on the peak, aloof and
imperturbable, beckoning and unexplained as always.... And again
she drew me toward her with that inexplicable fascination which had
been my undoing. As when I had first seen her from that other valley
to the south, I felt a curious desire to mount to her, to stand at her
feet, to inspect her closely and lay my hands upon her; and against
that desire neither Yasma's warnings nor my own reason had any
power. She was for me the unknown; she represented the
mysterious, the alluring, the unattained, and all that was most
youthful and alive within me responded to her call.
Yet Yulada was a discreet divinity, and did not offer herself too
readily to the worshipper. Was it that she kept herself deliberately
guarded, careful not to encourage the intruder? So I almost thought
as I made attempt after attempt to reach her. It is true, of course, that
I did not choose the most favorable season; likewise, it is true that I
was exceedingly reckless, for solitary mountain climbing in winter is
hardly a sport for the cautious. But, even so, I could not stamp out
the suspicion that more than natural agencies were retarding me.
My first attempt occurred but a week after Yasma's departure. Most
of the recent snow had melted from the mountain slopes, and the
temperature was so mild that I foresaw no exceptional difficulties. I
had just a qualm, I must admit, about breaking my word to Yasma—
but had the promise not been extorted by unfair pleas? So, at least, I
reasoned; and, having equipped myself with my goatskin coat, with a
revolver and matches, and with food enough to last overnight if need
be, I set out early one morning along one of the trails I had followed
with Karem.
For two hours I advanced rapidly enough, reaching the valley's end
and mounting along a winding path amid pine woods. The air was
brisk and invigorating, the sky blue and clear; scarcely a breeze
stirred, and scarcely a cloud drifted above. From time to time,
through rifts in the foliage, I could catch glimpses of my goal, that
gigantic steel-gray womanly form with hands everlastingly pointed
toward the clouds and the stars. She seemed never to draw nearer,
though my feet did not lag in the effort to reach her; but the day was
still young, and I was confident that long before sunset I should meet
her face to face.
Then suddenly my difficulties began. The trail became stonier and
steeper, though that did not surprise me; the trail became narrower
and occasionally blocked with snow, though that did not surprise me
either; great boulders loomed in my way, and sometimes I had to
crawl at the brink of a ravine, though that again I had expected. But
the real obstacle was not anticipated. Turning a bend in the wooded
trail, I was confronted with a sheer wall of rock, a granite mass
broken at one end by a sort of natural stairway over which it seemed
possible to climb precariously. I remembered how Karem and I had
helped one another up this very ascent, which was by no means the
most difficult on the mountain; but in the past month or two its aspect
had changed alarmingly. A coating of something white and glistening
covered the rock; in places the frosty crystals had the look of a
frozen waterfall, and in places the icicles pointed downward in long
shaggy rows.
Would it be possible to pass? I could not tell, but did not hesitate to
try; and before long I had an answer. I had mounted only a few yards
when my feet gave way, and I went sprawling backward down the
rocky stair. How near I was to destruction I did not know; the first
thing I realized was that I was clinging to the overhanging branch of
a tree, while beneath me gaped an abyss that seemed bottomless.
A much frightened but a soberer man, I pulled myself into the tree,
and climbed back to safety. As I regained the ground, I had a
glimpse of Yulada standing silently far above, with a thin wisp of
vapor across her face, as if to conceal the grim smile that may have
played there. But I had seen enough of her for one day, and slowly
and thoughtfully took my way back to the valley.
From that time forth, and during most of the winter, I had little
opportunity for further assaults upon Yulada. If that thin coat of
November ice had been enough to defeat me, what of the more
stubborn ice of December and the deep drifts of January snow?
Even had there not been prospects of freezing to death among the
bare, wind-beaten crags, I should not have dared to entrust myself to
the trails for fear of wolf-packs. Yet all winter Yulada stared
impassively above, a mockery and a temptation—the only thing in
human form that greeted me during those interminable months!
I shall pass over the eternities between my first attempt upon Yulada
in November and my more resolute efforts in March. But I must not
forget to describe my physical changes. I had grown a bushy brown
beard, which hid my chin and upper lip and spread raggedly over my
face; my hair hung as long and untended as a wild man's; while from
unceasing exertions in the open, my limbs had developed a strength
they had never known before, and I could perform tasks that would
have seemed impossible a few months earlier.
Hence it was with confidence that I awaited the spring. Daily I
scanned the mountains after the first sign of a thaw in the streams; I
noted how streaks and furrows gradually appeared in the white of
the higher slopes; how the gray rocky flanks began to protrude, first
almost imperceptibly, then more boldly, as though casting off an
unwelcome garb, until great mottled patches stood unbared to the
sunlight. Toward the middle of March there came a week of
unseasonably warm days, when the sun shone from a cloudless sky
and a new softness was in the air. And then, when half the winter
apparel of the peaks was disappearing as at a magic touch and the
streams ran full to the brim and the lake overflowed, I decided to pay
my long-postponed visit to Yulada.
Almost exultantly I set forth early one morning. The first stages of the
climb could hardly have been easier; it was as though nature had
prepared the way. The air was clear and stimulating, yet not too cool;
and the comparative warmth had melted the last ice from the lower
rocks. Exhilarated by the exercise, I mounted rapidly over slopes that
would once have been a formidable barrier. Still Yulada loomed afar,
with firm impassive face as always; but I no longer feared her, for
surely, I thought, I should this day touch her with my own hands! As I
strode up and up in the sunlight, I smiled to remember my old
superstitions—what was Yulada after all but a rock, curiously shaped
perhaps, but no more terrifying than any other rock!
Even when I had passed the timber-line, and strode around the blue-
white glaciers at the brink of bare ravines, I still felt an unwonted
bravado. Yulada was drawing nearer, noticeably nearer, her features
clear-cut on the peak—and how could she resist my coming? In my
self-confidence, I almost laughed aloud, almost laughed out a
challenge to that mysterious figure, for certainly the few intervening
miles could not halt me!
So, at least, I thought. But Yulada, if she were capable of thinking,
must have held otherwise. Even had she been endowed with reason
and with omnipotence, she could hardly have made a more terrible
answer to my challenge. I was still plodding up the long, steep
grades, still congratulating myself upon approaching success, when I
began to notice a change in the atmosphere. It was not only that the
air was growing sharper and colder, for that I had expected; it was
that a wind was rising from the northwest, blowing over me with a
wintry violence. In alarm, I glanced back—a stone-gray mass of
clouds was sweeping over the northern mountains, already casting a
shadow across the valley, and threatening to enwrap the entire
heavens.
Too well I recognized the signs—only too well! With panicky speed,
more than once risking a perilous fall, I plunged back over the path I
had so joyously followed. The wind rose till it blew with an almost
cyclonic fury; the clouds swarmed above me, angry and ragged-
edged; Yulada was forgotten amid my dread visions of groping
through a blizzard. Yet once, as I reached a turn in the trail, I caught
a glimpse of her standing far above, her lower limbs overshadowed
by the mists, her head obscured as though thus to mock my temerity.
And what if I did finally return to my cabin safely? Before I had
regained the valley, the snow was whirling about me on the arms of
the high wind, and the whitened earth, the chill air and the
screeching gale had combined to accentuate my sense of defeat.
It might be thought that I would now renounce the quest. But there is
in my nature some stubbornness that only feeds on opposition; and
far from giving up, I watched impatiently till the storm subsided and
the skies were washed blue once more; till the warmer days came
and the new deposits of snow thawed on the mountain slopes. Two
weeks after being routed by the elements, I was again on the trail to
Yulada.
The sky was once more clear and calm; a touch of spring was in the
air, and the sun was warmer than in months. Determined that no
ordinary obstacle should balk me, I trudged with scarcely a pause
along the winding trail; and, before many hours, I had mounted
above the last fringe of the pines and deodars. At last I reached the
point where I had had to turn back two weeks ago; at last I found
myself nearer to the peak than ever before on all my solitary
rambles, and saw the path leading ahead over bare slopes and
around distorted crags toward the great steel-gray figure. The
sweetness of triumph began to flood through my mind as I saw
Yulada take on monstrous proportions, the proportions of a fair-sized
hill; I was exultant as I glanced at the sky, and observed it to be still
serene. There remained one more elevated saddle to be crossed,
then an abrupt but not impossible grade of a few hundred yards—
probably no more than half an hour's exertion, and Yulada and I
should stand together on the peak!
But again the unexpected was to intervene. If I had assumed that no
agency earthly or divine could now keep me from my goal, I had
reckoned without my human frailties. It was a little thing that
betrayed me, and yet a thing that seemed great enough. I had
mounted the rocky saddle and was starting on a short descent
before the final lap, when enthusiasm made me careless. Suddenly I
felt myself slipping!
Fortunately, the fall was not a severe one; after sliding for a few
yards over the stones, I was stopped with a jolt by a protruding rock.
Somewhat dazed, I started to arise ... when a sharp pain in my left
ankle filled me with alarm. What if a tendon had been sprained?
Among these lonely altitudes, that might be a calamity! But when I
attempted to walk, I found my injury not quite so bad as I had feared.
The ankle caused me much pain, yet was not wholly useless; so that
I diagnosed the trouble as a simple strain rather than a sprain.
But there could be no further question of reaching Yulada that day.
With a bitter glance at the disdainful, indomitable mistress of the
peak, I started on my way back to Sobul. And I was exceedingly
lucky to get back at all, for my ankle distressed me more and more
as I plodded downward, and there were moments when it seemed as
if it would not bear me another step.
So slowly did I move that I had to make camp that evening on the
bare slopes at the edge of the forest; and it was not until late the
following day that I re-entered the village. And all during the return
trip, when I lay tossing in the glow of the campfire, or when I clung to
the wall-like ledges in hazardous descents, I was obsessed by
strange thoughts; and in my dreams that night I saw a huge taunting
face, singularly like Yulada's, which mocked me that I should match
my might against the mountain's.
 Chapter XIII
THE BIRDS FLY NORTH
It was with a flaming expectation and a growing joy that I watched
the spring gradually burst into blossom. The appearance of the first
green grass, the unfolding of the pale yellowish leaves on the trees,
the budding of the earliest wildflowers and the cloudy pink and white
of the orchards, were as successive signals from a new world. And
the clear bright skies, the fresh gentle breezes, and the birds
twittering from unseen branches, all seemed to join in murmuring the
same refrain: the warmer days were coming, the days of my
deliverance! Soon, very soon, the Ibandru would be back! And
among the Ibandru I should see Yasma!
Every morning now I awakened with reborn hope; and every
morning, and all the day, I would go ambling about the village,
peering into the deserted huts and glancing toward the woods for
sign of some welcome returning figure. But at first all my waiting
seemed of no avail. The Ibandru did not return; and in the evening I
would slouch back to my cabin in dejection that would always make
way for new hope. Day after day passed thus; and meantime the last
traces of winter were vanishing, the fields became dotted with
waving rose-red and violet and pale lemon tints; the deciduous trees
were taking on a sturdier green; insects began to chirp and murmur
in many a reviving chorus; and the woods seemed more thickly
populated with winged singers.
And while I waited and still waited, insidious fears crept into my
mind. Could it be that the Ibandru would not return at all?—that
Yasma had vanished forever, like the enchanted princess of a fairy
tale?
But after I had tormented myself to the utmost, a veil was suddenly
lifted.
One clear day in mid-April I had strolled toward the woods, forgetting
my sorrows in contemplating the green spectacle of the valley.
Suddenly my attention was attracted by a swift-moving triangle of
black dots, which came winging across the mountains from beyond
Yulada, approaching with great speed and disappearing above the
white-tipped opposite ranges. I do not know why, but these birds—
the first I had observed flying north—filled me with an unreasonable
hope; long after they were out of sight I stood staring at the blue sky
into which they had faded, as though somehow it held the secret at
which I clutched.
I was aroused from my reveries by the startled feeling that I was no
longer alone. At first there was no clear reason for this impression; it
was as though I had been informed by some vague super-sense.
Awakened to reality, I peered into the thickets, peered up at the sky,
scanned the trees and the earth alertly—but there was no sight or
sound to confirm my suspicions. Minutes passed, and still I waited,
expectant of some unusual event....
And then, while wonder kept pace with impatience, I thought I heard
a faint rustling in the woods. I was not sure, but I listened intently....
Again the rustling, not quite so faint as before ... then a crackling as
of broken twigs! Still I was not sure—perhaps it was but some tiny
creature amid the underbrush. But, even as I doubted, there came
the crunching of dead leaves trodden under; then the sound—
unmistakably the sound—of human voices whispering!
My heart gave a thump; I was near to shouting in my exultation.
Happy tears rolled down my cheeks; I had visions of Yasma
returning, Yasma clasped once more in my arms—when I became
aware of two dark eyes staring at me from amid the shrubbery.
"Karem!" I cried, and sprang forward to seize the hands of my friend.
Truly enough, it was Karem—Karem as I had last seen him, Karem
in the same blue and red garments, somewhat thinner perhaps, but
otherwise unchanged!
He greeted me with an emotion that seemed to match my own. "It is
long, long since we have met!" was all he was able to say, as he
shook both my hands warmly, while peering at me at arm's length.
Then forth from the bushes emerged a second figure, whom I
recognized as Julab, another youth of the tribe. He too was effusive
in his greetings; he too seemed delighted at our reunion.
But if I was no less delighted, it was not chiefly of the newcomers
that I was thinking. One thought kept flashing through my mind, and I
could not wait to give it expression. How about Yasma? Where was
she now? When should I see her? Such questions I poured forth in a
torrent, scarcely caring how my anxiety betrayed me.
"Yasma is safe," was Karem's terse reply. "You will see her before
long, though just when I cannot say."
And that was the most definite reply I could wrench from him. Neither
he nor Julab would discuss the reappearance of their people; they
would not say where they had been, nor how far they had gone, nor
how they had returned, nor what had happened during their
absence. But they insisted on turning the conversation in my
direction. They assured me how much relieved they were to find me
alive and well; they questioned me eagerly as to how I had passed
my time; they commented with zest upon my changed appearance,
my ragged clothes and dense beard; and they ended by predicting
that better days were in store.
More mystified than ever, I accompanied the two men to their cabins.
"We must make ready to till the fields," they reminded me, as we
approached the village, "for when the trees again lose their leaves
there will be another harvest." And they showed me where, unknown
to me, spades and shovels and plows had been stored in waterproof
vaults beneath the cabins; and they surprised me by pointing out the
bins of wheat and sacks of nuts and dried fruits, preserved from last
year's produce and harbored underground, so that when the people
returned to Sobul they might have full rations until the ripening of the
new crop.
Before the newcomers had been back an hour, they were both hard
at work in the fields. I volunteered my assistance; and was glad to be
able to wield a shovel or harrow after my long aimless months. The
vigorous activity in the open air helped to calm my mind and to drive
away my questionings; yet it could not drive them away wholly, and I
do not know whether my thoughts were most on the soil I made
ready for seeding or on things far-away and strange. Above all, I
kept thinking of Yasma, kept remembering her in hope that
alternated with dejection. Could it be true, as Karem had said, that I
was to see her soon? Surely, she must know how impatiently I was
waiting! She would not be the last of her tribe to reappear!
That night I had but little sleep; excited visions of Yasma permitted
me to doze away only by brief dream-broken snatches. But when the
gray of dawn began to creep in through the open window, sheer
weariness forced an hour's slumber; and I slept beyond my usual
time, and awoke to find the room bright with sunlight.
As I opened my eyes, I became conscious of voices without—
murmuring voices that filled me with an unreasoning joy. I peered out
of the window—no one to be seen! Excitedly I slipped on my coat,
and burst out of the door—still no one visible! Then from behind one
of the cabins came the roar of half a dozen persons in hearty
laughter ... laughter that was the most welcome I had ever heard.
I did not pause to ask myself who the newcomers were; did not stop
to wonder whether there were any feminine members of the group. I
dashed off crazily, and in an instant found myself confronted by—five
or six curiously staring men.
I know that I was indeed a sight; that my eyes bulged; that surprise
and disappointment shone in every line of my face. Otherwise, the
men would have been quicker to greet me, for instantly we
recognized each other. They were youths of the Ibandru tribe, all
known to me from last autumn; and they seemed little changed by
their long absence, except that, like Julab and Karem, they appeared
a trifle thinner.
"Are there any more of you here?" I demanded, after the first words
of explanation and welcome. "Are there—are there any—"
Curious smiles flickered across their faces.
"No, it is not quite time yet for the women," one of them replied, as if
reading my thoughts. "We men must come first to break the soil and
put the village in readiness."

If I had been of no practical use to the Ibandru in the fall, I was to be

plunged into continuous service this spring. Daily now I repeated that
first afternoon's help I had lent Karem in the fields; and when I did
not serve Karem himself, I aided one of his tribesmen, working from
sunrise to sunset with occasional intervals of rest.
It was well that I had this occupation, for it tended to keep me sane.
After three or four days, my uneasiness would have amounted to
agony had my labors not provided an outlet. For I kept looking for
one familiar form; and that form did not appear. More than twenty of
the men had returned, but not a single woman or child; and I had the
dull tormenting sense that I might not see Yasma for weeks yet.
This was the thought that oppressed me one morning when I began
tilling a little patch of land near the forest edge. My implements were
of the crudest, a mere shovel and spade to break the soil in primitive
fashion; and as I went through the laborious motions, my mind was
less on the task I performed than on more personal things. I could
not keep from thinking of Yasma with a sad yearning, wondering as
to her continued absence, and offering up silent prayers that I might
see her soon again.
And while I bent pessimistically over my spade, a strange song burst
forth from the woods, a bird-song trilling with the rarest delicacy and
sweetness. Enchanted, I listened; never before had I heard a song of
quite that elfin, ethereal quality. I could not recognize from what
feathered minstrel it came; I could only stand transfixed at its fluted
melody, staring in vain toward the thick masses of trees for a glimpse
of the tiny musician.
It could not have been more than a minute before the winged
enchantress fell back into silence; but in that time the world had
changed. Its black hostility had vanished; a spirit of beauty
surrounded me again, and I had an inexplicable feeling that all would
be well.
And as I gazed toward the forest, still hopeful of seeing the sweet-
voiced warbler, I was greeted by an unlooked-for vision.
Framed in a sort of natural doorway of the woods, where the pale
green foliage was parted in a little arched opening, stood a slender
figure with gleaming dark eyes and loose-flowing auburn hair.
"Yasma!" I shouted. And my heart pounded as if it would burst; and
my limbs shuddered, and my breath came fast; and the silent tears
flowed as I staggered forward with outspread arms.
Without a word she glided forth to meet me, and in an instant we
were locked in an embrace.
It must have been minutes before we parted. Not a syllable did we
speak; ours was a reunion such as sundered lovers may know
beyond the grave.
When at length our arms slipped apart and I gazed at the familiar
face, her cheeks were wet but her eyes were glistening. It might
have been but an hour since we had met, for she did not seem
changed at all.
"Oh, my beloved," she murmured, using the first term of endearment
I had ever heard from her lips, "it has been so long since I have seen
you! So long, oh, how long!"
"It has been long for me too. Longer than whole years. Oh, Yasma,
why did you have to leave?"
A frown flitted across the beautiful face, and the luminous eyes
became momentarily sad. "Do not ask that!" she begged. "Oh, do not
ask now!" And, seeing her distress, I was sorry that the
unpremeditated question had slipped from my lips.
"All that counts, Yasma," said I, gently, "is that you are here now. For
that I thank whatever powers have had you in their keeping."
"Thank Yulada!" she suggested, cryptically, with a motion toward the
southern mountains.
It was now my turn to frown.
"Oh, tell me, tell me all that has happened during the long winter!"
she demanded, almost passionately, as I clutched both her hands
and she stared up at me with an inquiring gaze. "You look so
changed! So worn and tired out, as if you had been through great
sufferings! Did you really suffer so much?"
"My greatest suffering, Yasma, was the loneliness I felt for you. That
was harder to bear than the blizzards. But, thank heaven! that is over
now. You won't ever go away from me again, will you, Yasma?"
She averted her eyes, then impulsively turned from me, and stood
staring toward that steel-gray figure on the peak. It was a minute
before she faced me again; and when she did so it was with lips
drawn and compressed.
"We must not talk of such things!" she urged, with pleading in her
eyes. "We must be happy, happy now while we can be, and not
question what is to come!"
"Of course, we must be happy now," I agreed. But her reply had
aroused my apprehensions, and even at the moment of reunion I
wondered whether she had come only to flutter away again like a
feather or a cloud.
"See how quick I came back to you!" she cried, as though to divert
my mind. "I left before all the other women, for I knew you would be
waiting here, lonely for me."
"And were you too lonely, Yasma?"
"Oh, yes! Very lonely! I never knew such loneliness before!" And the
great brown eyes again took on a melancholy glow, which brightened
into a happy luster as she looked up at me confidently and
reassuringly.
"Then let's neither of us be lonely again!" I entreated. And forgetting
my spade and shovel and the half-tilled field, I drew her with me into
the seclusion of the woods, and sat down with her by a bed of freshly
uncurling ferns beneath the shaded bole of a great oak.
"Remember, Yasma," I said, while I held both her hands and she
peered at me out of eyes large with emotion, "you made me a
promise about the spring. I asked you a question—the most
important question any human being can ask another—and you did
not give me a direct answer, but promised you would let me know
when the leaves were again sprouting on the trees. That time has
come now, and I am anxious for my answer, because I have had
long, so very long to wait."
Again I noticed a constraint about her manner. She hesitated before
the first words came; then spoke tremblingly and with eyes
downcast.
"I know that you have had long to wait, and I do not want to keep you
in suspense! I wish I could answer you now, answer outright, so that
there would never be another question—but oh, I cannot!—not yet,
not yet! Please don't think I want to cause you pain, for there's no
one on earth I want less to hurt! Please!"—And she held out her
hands imploringly, and her fingers twitched, and deep agitated
streams of red coursed to her cheeks.
"I know you don't want to hurt me—" I assured her.
But she halted me with a passionate outburst.
"All I know is that I love you, love you, love you!" she broke out, with
the fury of a vehement wild thing; and for a moment we were again
clasped in a tight embrace.
"But if you love me, Yasma," I pleaded, when her emotion had nearly
spent itself, "why treat me so oddly? Why not be perfectly frank? I
love you too, Yasma. Why not say you will be my wife? For I want
you with me always, always! Oh, I'd gladly live with you here in
Sobul—but if we could we'd go away, far, far away, to my own land,
and see things you never saw in your strangest dreams! What do
you say, Yasma?"
Yasma said nothing at all. She sat staring straight ahead, her fingers
folding and unfolding over some dead twigs, her lips drawn into rigid
lines that contrasted strangely with her moist eyes and cheeks.
"You promised that in the spring you would tell me," I reminded her,
gently.
I do not know what there was in these words to arouse her to frenzy.
Abruptly she sprang to her feet, all trace of composure gone; her
eyes blazed with unaccountable fires as she hurled forth her answer.
"Very well then, I will tell you! I cannot say yes to you, and I cannot
say no—I cannot, cannot! Go see my father, Abthar, as soon as he
returns—he will tell you! Go see him—and Hamul-Kammesh, the
soothsayer."
"Why Hamul-Kammesh?"
"Don't ask me—ask them!" she cried, with passion. "I've told you all I
can! You'll find out, you'll find out soon enough!"
To my astonishment, her fury was lost amid a tumult of sobbing. No
longer the passionate woman but the heart-broken child, she wept
as though she had nothing more to live for; and when I came to her
consolingly, she flung convulsive arms about me, and clung to me as
though afraid I would vanish. And then, while the storm gradually
died down and her slender form shook less spasmodically and the
tears flowed in dwindling torrents, I whispered tender and soothing
things into her ear; but all the time a new and terrible dread was in
my heart, for I was certain that Yasma had not told me everything,
but that her outburst could be explained only by some close-guarded
and dire secret.
 CHAPTER XIV
THE WARNING
Had it been possible to consult Abthar immediately in the effort to
fathom Yasma's strange conduct, I would have wasted only so much
time as was necessary to take me to the father's cabin. But,
unfortunately, I must remain in suspense. So far as I knew, Abthar
had not yet returned to the village; and none of the townsfolk
seemed sure when he would be back. "He will come before the last
blossom buds on the wild rose," was the only explanation they would
offer; and knowing that it was not the way of the Ibandru to be
definite, I had to be content with this response.
True, I might have followed Yasma's suggestion and sought advice
of Hamul-Kammesh, since already that Rip Van Winkle figure was to
be seen shuffling about the village. But ever since the time, months
before, when he had visited my sick-room and denounced me to the
people, I had disliked him profoundly; and I would about as soon
have thought of consulting a hungry tiger.
And so my only choice was to wait for Abthar's return. The interval
could not have been more than a week; but during all that time I
suffered torments. How to approach him, after his return, was a
question that occupied me continually. Should I ask him bluntly what
secret there was connected with Yasma? Or should I be less direct
but more open, and frankly describe my feelings? It was only after
much thought that I decided that it would be best to come to him
candidly as a suitor in quest of his daughter's hand.
I well remember with what mixed feelings I recognized Abthar's tall
figure once more in the village. What if, not unlike some western
fathers, he should be outraged at the idea of uniting his daughter to
an alien? Or what if he should mention some tribal law that forbade
my alliance to Yasma? or should inform me that she was already
betrothed? These and other possibilities presented themselves in a
tormenting succession ... so that, when at length I did see Abthar, I
was hampered by a weight of imaginary ills.
As on a previous occasion, I found the old man working among his
vines. Bent over his hoe, he was uprooting the weeds so diligently
that at first he did not appear to see me; and I had to hail him loudly
before he looked up with a start and turned upon me those searching
proud brown eyes of his.
We exchanged greetings as enthusiastically as old friends who have
not met for some time; while, abandoning his hoe, Abthar motioned
me to a seat beside him on a little mound of earth.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour our conversation consisted mostly
of questions on his part and answers on mine; for he was eager to
know how I had passed the winter, and had no end of inquiries to
make.
For my own part, I refrained from asking that question which
bewildered me most of all: how had he and his people passed the
winter? It was with extreme difficulty that I halted the torrent of his
solicitous queries, and informed him that I had a confession to offer
and a request to make.
Abthar looked surprised, and added to my embarrassment by stating
how gratified he felt that I saw fit to confide in him.
I had to reply, of course, that there was a particular reason for
confiding in him, since my confession concerned his daughter
Yasma.
"My daughter Yasma?" he repeated, starting up as though I had
dealt him a blow. And he began stroking his long grizzled beard
solemnly, and the keen inquiring eyes peered at me as though they
would bore their way straight through me and ferret out my last
thought.
"What about my daughter Yasma?" he asked, after a pause, and in
tones that seemed to bristle with just a trace of hostility.
As tranquilly as I could, I explained how much Yasma had come to
mean to me; how utterly I was captivated by her, how desirous of
making her my wife. And, concluding with perhaps more tact than
accuracy, I remarked that in coming to him to request the hand of his
daughter, I was taking the course considered proper in my own
country.
In silence Abthar heard me to the last word. He did not interrupt
when I paused as if anxious for comment; did not offer so much as a
syllable's help when I hesitated or stammered; did not permit any
emotion to cross his weather-beaten bronzed features. But he gazed
at me with a disquieting fixity and firmness; and the look in his alert
stern eyes showed that he had not missed a gesture or a word.
Even after I had finished, he sat regarding me contemplatively
without speaking. Meanwhile my fingers twitched; my heart thumped
at a telltale speed; I felt like a prisoner arraigned before the bar. But
he, the judge, appeared unaware of my agitation, and would not
break my suspense until he had fully decided upon his verdict.
Yet his first words were commonplace enough.
"I had never expected anything at all like this," he said, in low sad
tones. "Nothing like this has ever been known among our people.
We Ibandru have seen little of strangers; none of our young people
have ever taken mates outside the tribe. And so your confession
comes as a shock."
"It should not come as a shock," was all I could mumble in reply.
"Were I as other fathers," continued the old man, suavely, "I might
rise up and order you expelled from our land. Or I might grow angry
and shout, and forbid you to see my daughter again. Or I might be
crafty, and ask you to engage in feats of prowess with the young
men of the town—and so might prove your unworthiness. Or I might
send your request to the tribal council, which would decide against
you. But I shall do none of these things. Once I too was young, and
once I too—" here his voice faltered, and his eyes grew soft with
reminiscence—"once I too knew what it was to love. So I shall try not
to be too harsh, my friend. But you ask that which I fear is
impossible. For your sake, I am sorry that it is impossible. But it is
my duty to show you why."
During this speech my heart had sunk until it seemed dead and cold
within me. It was as if a world had been shattered before my eyes;
as if in the echoes of my own thoughts I heard that fateful word,
"Impossible, impossible, impossible!"
"There are so many things to consider, so many things you cannot
even know," Abthar proceeded, still stroking his beard meditatively,
while my restless fingers toyed with the clods of earth, and my eyes
followed absently the wanderings of an ant lost amid those
mountainous masses. "But let me explain as well as I can. I shall try
to talk to you as a friend, and forget for the time that I am Yasma's
father. I shall say nothing of my hopes for her, and how I always
thought to see her happy with some sturdy young tribesman, with my
grandchildren upon her knee. I shall say nothing of the years that are
past, and how I have tried to do my best for her, a motherless child;
how sometimes I blundered and sometimes misunderstood, and was
more anxious about her and more blest by her than you or she will
ever know. Let that all be forgotten. What concerns us now is that
you are proposing to make both her and yourself more unhappy than
any outcast."
"Unhappy!" I exclaimed, with an unconscious gesture to the blue
skies to witness how I was misjudged. "Unhappy! May the lightning
strike me down if I don't want to make her happier than a queen!"
"So you say," replied the old man, with just the hint of a cynical
smile, "and so you no doubt believe. We all set out in life to make
ourselves and others happy—and how many of us succeed? Just
now, Yasma's blackest enemy could not do her greater mischief."
"Oh, don't say that!" I protested, clenching my fists with a show of
anger. "Have you so far misunderstood me? Do you believe that I—
that I—"
"I believe your motives are of the worthiest," interrupted Abthar,
quietly. "But let us be calm. It is not your fault that your union with
Yasma would be a mistake; circumstances beyond all men's control
would make it so."
"What circumstances?"
"Many circumstances. Some of them concern only you; some only
Yasma. But suppose we begin with you. I will forget that Yasma and I
really know very little about you; about your country, your people,
your past. I am confident of your good faith; and for that reason, and
because I consider you my friend, I do not want to see you beating
your heart out on the rocks. Yet what would happen? Either you
would find your way back to your own land and take Yasma with you,
or else you would live with her in Sobul. And either course would be
disastrous.
"Let us first say that you took her with you to your own country. I
have heard only vague rumors as to that amazing land; but I am
certain what its effect would be. Have you ever seen a wild duck with
a broken wing, or a robin in a cage? Have you ever thought how a
doe must feel when it can no longer roam the fields, or an eagle
when barred from the sky? Think of these, and then think how
Yasma will be when the lengthening days can no longer bring her
back to Sobul!"
The old man paused, and with an eloquent gesture pointed to the
jagged, snow-streaked circle of the peaks and to the far-off,
mysterious figure of Yulada.
"Yes, yes, I have thought of that," I groaned.
"Then here is what we must expect. If you should take Yasma with
you to your own country, she would perish—yes, she would perish
no matter how kind you were to her, for endless exile is an evil that
none of us Ibandru can endure. Yet if you remained with her in
Sobul, you would be exiled from your own land and people."
"That is only too true," I sighed, for the thought was not exactly new
to me.
But at that instant I chanced to catch a distant glimpse of an auburn-
haired figure lithely skirting the further fields; and the full
enchantment of Yasma was once more upon me.
"It would be worth the exile!" I vowed, madly. "Well, well worth it! For
Yasma's sake, I'd stay here gladly!"
"Yes, gladly," repeated the old man, with a sage nod. "I know you
would stay here gladly—for a while. But it would not take many
years, my friend, not many years before you would be weary almost
to death of this quiet little valley and its people. Why, you would be
weary of us now were it not for Yasma. And then some day, when
unexpectedly you found the route back to your own world, you would
pick up your things and silently go."
"Never! By all I have ever loved, I could not!" I swore. "Not while
Yasma remained!"
"Very well, let us suppose you would stay here," conceded Abthar,
hastily, as though skimming over a distasteful topic. "Then if your life
were not ruined, Yasma's would be. There are reasons you may not
be aware of."
"There seems to be much here that I am not aware of."
"No doubt," Abthar admitted, in matter-of-fact tones. And then, with a
gesture toward the southern peak, "Yulada has secrets not for every
man's understanding."
For an instant he paused, in contemplation of the statue-like figure;
then quickly continued, "Now here, my friend, is the thing to
remember. Take the migration from which we are just returning. Do
not imagine that we make such a pilgrimage only once in a lifetime.
Every autumn, when the birds fly south, we follow in their wake; and
every spring we return with the northward-winging flocks."
"Every autumn—and every spring!" I gasped, in dismay, for Abthar
had confirmed my most dismal surmises.
"Yes, every autumn and every spring. How would you feel, my friend,
with a wife that left you five months or six every year? How do you
think your wife would feel when she had to leave?"
"But would she have to leave? Why would she? After we were
married, would she not be willing to stay here?"
"She might be willing—but would she be able?" asked Abthar,
pointedly. "This is no matter of choice; it is a law of her nature. It is a
law of the nature of all Ibandru to go every autumn the way of the
southward-speeding birds. Could you ask the sap to stop flowing
from the roots of the awakening tree in April? Could you ask the
fountains not to pour down from the peaks when spring thaws the
snow? Then ask one of us Ibandru to linger in Sobul when the frosty
days have come and the last November leaf flutters earthward."
Abthar's words bewildered me utterly, as all reference to the flight of
the Ibandru had bewildered me before. But I did not hesitate to admit
my perplexity. "Your explanation runs contrary to all human
experience," I argued. "During my studies and travels, I have heard
of many races of men who differed much in habits and looks; but all
were moved by the same impulses, the same natural laws. You
Ibandru alone seem different. You disappear and reappear like
phantoms, and claim to do so because of an instinct never found in
the natural world."
My companion sat staring at me quizzically. There was just a little of
surprise in his manner, just a little of good-natured indulgence, and
something of the smiling tolerance which one reserves for the well-
meaning and simple-minded.
"In spite of your seeming knowledge, my friend," he remarked at
length, "I see that you are really quite childish in your views. You are
mistaken in believing that we Ibandru do not follow natural laws. We
are guided not by an instinct unknown in the great world around us,
but by one that rules the lives of countless living things: the birds in
the air and the fishes in the streams, and even, if I am to believe the
tales I have heard, is found among certain furry animals in the wide
waters and at times among swarms of butterflies."
"But if you feel the same urge as these creatures, then why should
only you out of all men feel it?"
"No doubt it exists elsewhere, although weakened by unnatural ways
of life. Did it ever occur to you that it may have been common to all
men thousands of years ago? Did you never stop to think that you
civilized folk may have lost it, just as you have lost your keenness of
scent and sense of direction? while we Ibandru have preserved it by
our isolation and the simplicity of our lives? As your own fathers may
have been five hundred generations ago, so we Ibandru are today."
"But if your migration be a natural thing," I asked, remembering the
sundry mysteries of Sobul, "why make a secret of it? Why not tell me
where you go in winter? Indeed, why not take me with you?"
A strange light came into Abthar's eyes. There was something a little
secretive and yet something a little exalted in his manner as he lifted
both hands ardently toward Yulada, and declared, "There are truths
of which I dare not speak, truths that the tradition of my tribe will not
let me reveal. But do not misunderstand me, my friend; we must
keep our secrets for the sake of our own safety as well as because
of Yulada. If all that we do were known to the world, would we not be
surrounded by curious and unkindly throngs? Hence our ancient
sages ordained that when we Ibandru go away at the time of falling
leaves we must go alone, unless there be with us some
understanding stranger—one who has felt the same inspiration as
we. But such a stranger has never appeared. And until he does
appear, Yulada will weave dread spells over him who betrays her
secrets!"
The old man paused, and I had no response to make.
"But all this is not what you came to see me about," he continued.
"Let us return to Yasma. Now that I have told you of our yearly
migration, you can judge of the folly you were contemplating. But let
me mention another fact, which even by itself would make your
marriage foolhardy."
"What fact can that be?" I demanded, feeling as if a succession of
hammer strokes had struck me on the head.
"Again I must go out of my way to explain. For many generations, as
far back as our traditions go, there has been one of our number
known as a soothsayer, a priest of Yulada. His mission is to read the
omens of earth and sky, to scan the clouds and stars, and to tell us
Yulada's will. Sometimes his task has been difficult, for often Yulada
has hidden behind a mist; but at other times his duty has been clear